


Tomorrow They Will Ask Me Questions

by Laetitia_Laetitii



Category: Runescape
Genre: Gen, Morytania, Vampyre, post-River of Blood, vyre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-16
Updated: 2016-08-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 04:14:27
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7786372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laetitia_Laetitii/pseuds/Laetitia_Laetitii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A little detail from post-River  of Blood Morytania, something that fascinates me. Of course, this story deals with a single case, rather than the wider  implications of this happening to thousands of people.<br/>I know that's a very uninformative description.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Tomorrow They Will Ask Me Questions

Tomorrow they will ask me questions, but I will not tell. I will not tell, no matter how well I remember.

I was born a man, from a human mother and a human father, and I lived as a man for thirty-six years.

Most of these years were spent at war, but that was hardly unusual in those times. It was no different anywhere else. In my thirty-seventh year the war finally ended, when one day the earth burst open, and the enemy’s horde — screaming with fury and blood-thirst, rising like the dead from their graves — rushed to take the city.

The last thing I remember seeing as a man are the bars of my cage and the fiery pool swirling below.

The first thing I remember feeling as something else is hunger. All-encompassing, all-consuming. Hunger and fear. Colours were dull now, but scents were sharp, and around me I could hear every beating heart for yards.

They left us in the woods to fend for ourselves. It was to rid us of our last human thoughts, our last human feelings. It was a simple process, really: they let starvation teach us. It ate us and tortured us and weakened us until it had reduced us to mindless beasts, who each had to decide whether to perish or feed.  I chose the latter.

To feed was to hunt, and that meant seeking out villages. From hunger I learned to wait in the dark for the traveller, to trail the trapper on his round, to lure the playing child with sounds of bird-song. I fed. I survived. I grew strong. When others tried to poach in my hunting grounds I ripped open their throats, and I tore apart their corpses limb by limb.

Much, much later, they came for the survivors —those who had not devolved — and they brought us back to the city. At the bloody initiation ceremony my ferociousness did not go unnoticed, and I was allowed to keep my wings.

After that I lived in the city. First as a servant to my strongers, then as an official, then as a guard, until at last, after years and years of degrading toil, I killed the last creature in my way and moved to the upper tier.

And then I lived in the way those in the upper tier do.

(There were those who said my kind had no place there. I enjoyed disposing of them.)

A long time passed. Food became scarcer. Unrest grew everywhere. At meetings that were first secret and later public, we plotted rebellion.

At the end there was no rebellion, nor was there a war. I simply went to sleep one morning, and the following night the world I had known for thousands of years was gone. The humans were free, we were told, but like caged rabbits, they made no move to get out. In the meantime, the rations we were fed became smaller and smaller. One night, I decided to descend to the lower city to find food. I filled my pockets with bribes —bread, medicine —certain that I could buy a small meal somewhere.

I tried. I went around asking (And how badly it jarred me to ask!), making offers and promises, but to no avail. Finally, a man seemed to take up my offer, but insisted we complete the transaction at a nearby abandoned house (Stupid, mindless beast.)

The moment the door closed, they were upon me. There were at least a dozen of them, hacking with their blisterwood, slashing with their sickles. Then I felt chains, burning silver chains wrap around my wings and arms and legs, and they forced me on the floor and held me there while one of them pried open my jaws.

The pain! The pain I felt when the liquid was poured down my throat…the scalding silvthril, the blistering ashes, the searing agony of it all…And then the other pain: my bones melting and twisting, my wings receding, my very insides writhing as they reformed themselves. My eyes, my ears, my mouth, all on fire…and the humans held on to the chains, pulling them ever tighter, while I screamed and screamed and screamed.

It was morning when I woke up. I was naked, and for the first time in centuries, I was cold. I was still lying on the floor where I had passed out, but the restraints were gone. There was no trace of my captors anywhere.

It was then that I noticed I was dirty —as my entrails had taken their old shape, my body had rejected the unfit food inside. As a result, I was reclining in a puddle of sticky, black shit. Judging by the pain in my stomach, I had retched myself empty too, and my face and chest were covered in blood-streaked bile.

Breathing hurt. Moving hurt. In many places, the metal had rubbed my skin off. Presently I became aware of the red-hot pain in my wounds, but my voice was gone from screaming. Worst of all, I was hungry.

I don’t know for how long I laid there in my own mess, but at some point, when it was already near dusk, I realized I had to choose whether to perish or feed. Weak, naked, covered in my own filth, I crawled out to the alley. There were humans there, and upon seeing me, their faces were filled with horror, but not for the reasons I was used to.

_What had happened to me? Had I been attacked? Someone get this man help, he’s injured!_

They tried to ask me questions, but I could only shake my head. Finally, someone enquired if I was an escaped prisoner. I nodded. It was true, in a sense. From the mines?

I had visited the mines, had I not? I nodded again.

And then I was brought to this house, one of the ramshackle shacks of the lower city. They bathed me and clothed me and they dressed my wounds. They gave me gruel to eat, and when I could not eat, they fed me.

They fed me.

It is night-time now, and I lie awake on the cot I was given. In the moonlight the colours are vivid and the scents are dull. There are five other humans in this house and hundreds more nearby, but the only beating heart I can hear is my own.

In the morning, they will want to know who I am. I will not tell. I will not say a word. Not because of what they might do to me, but because I can’t bear to speak of it.

On my arm, I can see a flea crawling amid the sparse hairs. I leave it be. I lie back, letting my eyes fall shut, and I barely feel the tiny sting as the thing feasts on my blood. 


End file.
